Patent attributes
Systems and methods for digitally linking multiple microphones and managing microphone signals are provided. Embodiments provide for digitally linking of multiple auto-mixer systems where a large number of microphones are required. In large auto-mixer systems, microphone input channels may be distributed among many devices. Rather than transmitting these signals individually to a central processing device for the auto-mixer, it is most efficient to distribute the audio signal processing functions of the automatic microphone mixer among multiple devices in an audio conferencing system. Subsequently, a smaller number of gated mixes of microphone signals may be transmitted between devices. Thus, embodiments of the present invention act to digitally link multiple microphone signals, arbitrating these signals, in order to enable distributed automatic microphone mixers to behave as a single mixer.